DAYTON, OH.- The Dayton Art Institute’s most recent Centennial Focus Exhibition, Art of Ernest Blumenschein, is on view through February 23, 2020. The DAI is presenting this exhibition, showcasing the DAI’s own Blumenschein painting, Canyon, Red and Black (1934), as well as other noted works on loan to the museum.

Art of Ernest Blumenschein features 15 works from throughout the artist’s career, including paintings, drawings, studies and illustrations. This focus exhibition highlights the career of one of Dayton’s most successful artists.

“Blumenschein showed his first artistic talents while living in Dayton, so it is fitting that we highlight his art as we continue the DAI’s Centennial year celebration,” said DAI Chief Curator, Dr. Jerry N. Smith. “This exhibition will feature works from throughout his career and demonstrates his daring aesthetic and proto-modernist style. Museums as diverse as the DAI, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art collected his paintings in his lifetime, and he influenced regional as well as national trends in art.”

Blumenschein (1874—1960) was one of the most successful artists working in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Dayton, Blumenschein went on to co-found the influential Taos, New Mexico, artists’ colony in 1898 and was a founding member of both the conservative Taos Society of Artists and the more modernist New Mexico Painters. He helped raise the profile for Western American art by carefully balancing traditional artistic expression with progressive ideas found in much modern art of the time.

The Dayton Art Institute’s showing of Art of Ernest Blumenschein is presented with support from Supporting Sponsors Miriam Rosenthal Foundation for the Arts and Bill & Wanda Lukens, with additional support from FEG Investment Advisors.

Art of Ernest Blumenschein is FREE for museum members and included in the museum’s general admission for non-members. General admission is $15 adults; $10 seniors (60+), active military and groups (10 or more); $5 students (18+ w/ID) and youth (ages 7–17); free for children (ages 6 & younger). General admission also includes admission to the special exhibition Maker & Muse: Women and Early 20th-Century Art Jewelry, as well as the focus exhibitions Mona Lisa Today, William Preston Mayfield Photographs and In the Company of Friends: The Kettering and Patterson Legacy.

The exhibition is organized by the Dayton Art Institute and the DAI is its only venue.